Paul Kengor on the New Film, REAGAN
(Audio Clip) Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Michael Medved: The story behind those words and the scene in which President Reagan actually delivered them are both living again on screen because of the new movie Reagan, which is in theaters across the country.
And the film is based on a great book. The book is called The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. The author of that book is my friend Paul Kengor, who is a professor of political science at Grove City College. He’s the executive director of the indispensable Institute for Faith and Freedom, which is a Grove City College conservative think tank and policy center. Paul is also the editor of American Spectator.
Paul, when did you first begin working on the adaptation of your book The Crusader about Ronald Reagan for presentation with an All-Star cast, I should say, on the American screen?
Paul Kengor: Well, I'll tell you, Michael, it took literally 20 years. So go back to 2004. Here we are in 2024. You’ve understood for a long time that it’s so hard to get Hollywood to make a major film about anyone or anything that’s conservative. You would think it would be easy for the most popular president since Eisenhower, if not FDR. A man who was reelected 40 years ago by winning 49 out of 50 states, won the Electoral College, 525 to 13, almost 60% of the vote, twice won California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, even Massachusetts, right? In fact, in the beginning of The Crusader, I quote Walter Cronkite saying, "I’ve never seen anything like it. Everybody loves Reagan. No one dislikes the man." But it took us that long to get the film made, and it began with a call from—and you’ll appreciate this, Michael, this is almost poetic—from the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois, by Mark Josephs, the producer, in 2004. And he said, "I just read your book, God of Ronald Reagan. This is the book I’ve been waiting for. Does anybody have the movie rights?" I said, "No." I said, "You possibly could." And I told him, I said, "However, you might want to read my next book, the follow-up that I’m writing right now. It’s called The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. It starts with the Rock River. Rock River is like a metaphor for Reagan’s battle against atheistic communism. So I think that’s the book you probably want to make the movie on."
So the movie ended up being based on The Crusader, but you could see elements of both books in it. And the pivotal turning point was when we got Dennis Quaid to play Reagan, and that was probably about four years ago. And at that point, Michael, you know how it is, right? You need a major star in the film. And once we had the major star, finally that was it. We raised the rest of the money and we were off and running.
Michael Medved: Well, it’s an amazing story. The movie has a framing device that is fascinating and ambitious. The story of Reagan unfolds in the words of a retired Soviet spy who refers to President Reagan as the Crusader. Now the movie follows actual history very, very closely. The replication of the shooting attack by John Hinckley on President Reagan in 1981 is so vivid and so similar to the newsreel footage that’s available from that. But was there ever evidence that the Soviets and the KGB described Reagan as the Crusader?
Paul Kengor: Oh yeah, yeah. In fact, I pulled The Crusader off my shelf and I was rereading it again. You’ll see in the opening, the preface different quotes from people. And there are two or three quotes from Pravda, Izvestia, Yuri Kichegin, other Soviets, Soviet KGB/journalists, talking about the Crusader and his troops’ crusade against communism. So they use the phrase a lot.
I first came upon it in a book by an author named Norman Wines, who was from Reagan’s hometown Dixon, Illinois, and he said the Soviets called him the Crusader. And I thought, wow, that’s interesting. And I tracked the guy down and I said, "I’ve never heard this before, that they called him the Crusader." He said, "Yeah, I saw it in a number of different things." So I started digging into Soviet media archives and pretty soon I had like 20 different examples of them calling Reagan the Crusader. So our KGB agent, Victor, played by John Voight, is a kind of composite character of all of these different KGB agents that monitored Reagan and wrote reports on him, wrote articles about him, wrote studies on him, and referred to him as the Crusader, “declaring this crusade against our country. He’s a madman, a madman!” But that’s how they referred to him.
Michael Medved: But they respected him deeply. And I know this is true because I remember it’s very clear in your book. They had their eyes on Reagan before he really ran for president the first time. The Soviet intelligence apparatus was already extremely concerned about Reagan and his leadership abilities. Why?
Paul Kengor: Yeah, in fact, I mean, I can give you so many examples of that, but there’s a 1970s East German Stasi report where they said, “This Reagan, he is not like Richard Nixon. He is not a pragmatist. He’s a very principled politician. He thinks he can actually roll back Soviet communism.” One Pravda report, I think it’s 1975, says, "The political dinosaur from California has declared a crusade. He thinks he can roll back communism. It is true!” And the article was titled something like "The Great Truth of Our Time." They had these dramatic titles. And so of all things, then when the Americans go and elect this guy, the Soviets are just apoplectic. They can’t believe that this happened. And what really solidified Reagan’s desire—a kind of personal passion—to double down on his idea (expressed to Richard Allen in 1977, "We win, they lose,") was when Reagan was shot on March 30th, 1981. And he told Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, the Reverend Louis Evans, his pastor at the National Presbyterian Church, all these other people, he said, "Whatever time I have left is for Him. I’m now going to recommit to doing everything in my final years to win this thing—to defeat Soviet communism."…
(This is a partial transcript. Listen to the audio above for the full interview.)